I just realized that my comment may have come off as rude or snarky. This was not my intent. Prior to reading Treppenwitz post, I didn’t know the show was originally British. I assumed that they didn’t know that it ever ran in the USA. I was just trying to be informative.
Hey, I saw no snark - no problem here. I was just noting that back in the day a bit of joshing casual racism wasn’t something that wasn’t taken too seriously.
All good.
j
Hell, we routinely drank while driving. Referred to a trip as a 2 can or a sixer. First time I drove to Texas I was surprised and happy (gad it was hot!) to find out that it was actually still legal to drink while driving. We bought a big bag of ice and a case of beer and straddled the thing to cool off. Wonderful.
- The trailing end of the hippie era, when people let it all hang out, put aside their sexual hangups, and Show Me! by Will McBride was published in the USA:
https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.sVdoTwtxRUxv-gGOp8iO-gAAAA?pid=ImgDet&rs=1
Family nudity, displays of erections, matter-of-fact explanations about semen, watching older siblings having sex with their partners, and experimental touching.
I’ll be watching you takes on a different meaning today. From innocent and affectionate to…
There’s a scene in the Brady Bunch in which the youngest two mention that they’ve been invited to swim in a neighbor’s pool without suits (Alice tells them to put on their suits).
The song is explicitly about Big Brother. It was never intended to be “innocent and affectionate”.
Perhaps, but I remember when it first came out, and the Big Brother connection was never considered by my (adult) peers. Maybe it was us who were innocent.
TIL. I guess I was remembering Julie Brown’s constant presence on MTV.
I loved Julie Brown. Her first album was brilliant.
God yes!
From Big and Stupid to Time Slips Away.
I don’t remember thinking there was a Big Brother connection when it came out - but there were plenty of people who thought it was about what we would now call a stalker and couldn’t understand why it was so popular at weddings… Although we wouldn’t have used the word stalker in '83 - probably something more like “jealous boyfriend”.
Absolutely true. Blazing Saddles went after the conventions of Hollywood Westerns and of pulp westerns in general that people had grown up with, especially the “whitewashing” (in multiple senses of the word) involved. Brooks made a whole career of mocking classic genre tropes, and of saying yes, “you CAN make a joke about that” (Springtime for Hitler, anyone?) Meanwhile Airplane! mocked directly the ever-increasingly-ludicrous Airport series of disaster movies by essentially using the entire actual script of an earlier such film, Zero Hour.
This, BTW, creates a blessing IMO insofar as these films become immunized from someone rebooting them “new and improved” to push his current vision. A 2020s equivalent to Blazing Saddles or Airplane! would need to be essentially written anew like TriPolar says, and it would not be Blazing Saddles or Airplane! it would be something that stands on its own in the 2020s.
One of them being Sting himself.
heh sounds like a sexed up version of kids incorporated which a lot of people found uncomfortable … even tho there was a “story” (or excuse) that involved the songs being played
Really? What on earth does this have to do with Big Brother? I mean, I know there’s a love story in 1984, but I don’t see how it makes sense to be still riffing on the “every step you take” thing in this part if this is supposed to be the their feelings.
Since you’ve gone, I’ve been lost without a trace
I dream at night, I can only see your face
I look around, but it’s you I can’t replace
I feel so cold, and I long for your embrace
I keep crying baby, baby please
How my poor heart aches
With every step you take…How my poor heart aches
With every step you take?
If it’s not about a guy obsessively in love whose heart was broken, it’s impressive misdirection.
Yes, and I don’t think it was so much a question of innocence. Only about 30% of the lyrics are comprehensible in Sting’s singing*, but the obvious reading is a guy in love who can’t stop thinking about his girl. You can read it as obsessive perhaps to the point of stalkery, but there’s nothing (at least nothing comprehensible) that’s unambiguously about a Big Brother angle. And the beautiful music is not at all sinister in tone - it starts wistful then goes quite upbeat in parts. So I don’t think it’s at all surprising that everyone took it as a beautiful song about obsessive love, perhaps glossing over the stalkery part because the music is so great, that you can play for a slow dance at weddings.
*cite:
And reading the Wikipedia article, I know question this assertion altogether. Sting is quoted as saying he was thinking about Big Brother, but it sounds to me that he meant he was considering the parallel to the stalkerish behavior of an obsessive lover - the latter being what the song is actually about.
Every Breath You Take - Wikipedia
We have:
It sounds like a comforting love song. I didn’t realise at the time how sinister it is. I think I was thinking of Big Brother, surveillance and control.
but also
He insists it is about the obsession with a lost lover, and the jealousy and surveillance that follow.
The point is that it was never an innocent love song to begin with, but a song about toxic and exploitative love.
Sure, Big Brother. And Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds had nothing to do with drugs either.
Sure, that’s my point. Your point that I disputed was: